Kobe Bryant is leading the league in scoring at 29.9 points per game, but the Lakers are only 17-21. / Gary A. Vasquez, USA TODAY Sports

by David Leon Moore, USA TODAY Sports

by David Leon Moore, USA TODAY Sports

LOS ANGELES ‚?? He is 34 now, about to play the 1,420th NBA game of his 17-year career, including playoff games, and these days Kobe Bryant conducts long, cordial postgame interviews in front of his locker with his feet in an ice bucket, bags of ice bandaged to both knees and occasionally adorned with a bonus bag of ice, like the one bandaged to his left shoulder Tuesday night.

"There's nothing really troubling physically," Bryant said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY Sports on the eve of a game against the NBA champion Miami Heat.

"Just general 34-year-old soreness."

There's nothing really troubling his basketball game, either.

Just extraordinary 34-year-old excellence.

At an age when most players begin to decline, and playing almost 39 minutes a night, and playing for a team with a 17-21 record, Bryant is having one of the best seasons of his career. He leads the league in scoring at 29.9 points per game. His shooting percentage ‚?? 47.8% -- is the best of his career. And, recently, he has been reminding everyone that he can still be an elite defender.

Despite the Lakers' failure so far to become a championship-caliber team after the additions of Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, Bryant has become more cooperative and relaxed with the local news media, leading to the impression that the famously reserved and sometimes-prickly superstar has become kinder and gentler.

Not so, Bryant said.

"I'm not any kinder than I have been in the past. A lot of it is just perception, how people view me. I think throughout my years of being here, I think people, especially the media, have accepted how I am. You know, the dry humor, the sarcasm, all this other stuff, I think it's just becoming a little more accepted. But I have been much more patient with my teammates in understanding the difficulties of going through this season."

Bryant talked candidly about many subjects -- leadership, this disappointing season, his aches and pains, the ups and downs of Howard, how easy it is for him to score -- and even confessed a single vulnerability when asked if the fact that his free-throw attempts are up indicates he's not afraid to still drive into the lane.

"The only thing I'm afraid of is bees," he said. "I don't like bees. I'm allergic to them."

A 'TAXING' SEASON

If the Lakers can keep the bees away, this could become one of Bryant's best seasons statistically while also being one of his most challenging.

"It's the most challenging in terms of trying to figure out which button to push to try to get us turned around, from a leadership perspective," Bryant said. "Physically, it's probably the most taxing one."

Bryant just made it more taxing by agreeing with coach Mike D'Antoni that the team needs him to take on a ball-hawking role at the top of the Lakers much-shredded defense, disrupting point guards or denying the ball to shooting guards, basically gluing himself to the opponents' best perimeter offensive player.

It's something he has done before. He's a nine-time first-team All-Defensive pick. But he hadn't done it recently, and those days seemed over.

Not to Bryant. He knew he could still lock down defensively.

"I knew it was there," he said. "During the summer, you can feel it."

Now Kyrie Irving and Brandon Jennings know it, too. On Sunday, the Lakers ended a six-game losing streak when Irving, the Cleveland Cavaliers' explosive star, averaging 23 points a game, was held mostly by Bryant to 15 in a 20-point Lakers victory. On Tuesday, Bryant did the same to the Milwaukee Bucks' dynamic Jennings, holding him to 12 points, six below his average.

Bryant also produced two of his most efficient offensive games of the year at the same time, hitting a combined 21 of 33 shots for 54 points.

This is age-defying stuff, so what does Bryant's age-defying teammate, point guard Steve Nash, think of it?

"He's our most athletic player still at age, what, 34? Hey, he's still young," Nash, who turns 39 next month, said.

Of Bryant taking on a difficult defensive challenge, Nash said, "When you give him a challenge, he's a better defender. And when you put athleticism and length on smaller players, I can speak from experience, it's difficult. It helps our team on that end of the floor. I think it helps him really be engaged.

"And hopefully, he's finding a lot of comfort in this offense. It's not as difficult for him in some ways. With the efficiency he's playing with, and the athleticism he still has, he should be able to feast."

But can he keep it up, at age 34, playing 39 minutes a game, for the rest of the season?

"I don't know," Bryant said. "I'm in great shape. Physically I feel fine. Obviously, after the games, I'm sore as hell. But I do quite a bit to recover and by the next game, I'm fine."

ANOTHER SCORING TITLE?

Taking on the defensive role was a natural for Bryant for two reasons. It's a leadership move, and Bryant, despite his critics in this area, takes his leadership responsibilities seriously. And it's an individual challenge, and nothing gets Bryant pumped up like a challenge.

Maybe at one point in his career he wanted scoring titles, and he won two of them. If the focus on defense costs him a third scoring title, it's of no concern to him.

"I've never been that way," he said. "That's just not in my nature. I'm extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. Scoring titles and stuff like that ... it sounds, well, I don't care how it sounds, to me, scoring comes easy. It's not a challenge to me to win the scoring title because I know I can. The challenge is getting this team through this funk and elevating us to the ultimate level of winning a championship. That's the challenge that excites me."

His leadership came into question recently by Lakers legend Magic Johnson, who declined comment for this story. Bryant shrugged it off.

"I don't pay any attention to that," he said. "Magic has five championships. I have five championships. I'm pretty sure we both know what we're doing."

Kupchak, asked if Bryant is a good leader, paused long and said, "I would say he's a good leader, but he's not the type to go out to lunch with you and put his arm around you. He's an old-school leader. It's follow me and I'll take you where you want to go."

Bryant disagreed with Kupchak's assessment of him as a distant leader.

"That's a misconception," he said. "I drive a hard bargain. That's probably the thing that stands out the most. But it's impossible to drive a hard bargain without first establishing a relationship. He's right in the sense that I'm a taskmaster and I'm going to drive them hard. But you can't drive somebody hard and have them respond to you without having a relationship."

Building a relationship with Howard is a work in process. The serious, intense Bryant and the outgoing, giggly Howard, 27, couldn't be more different in some ways.

Howard, who had back surgery last spring, has been something of a disappointment, not dominating the way the Lakers had hoped. And there was a story earlier this month, denied by all the Lakers, in the New York Daily News that the two almost came to blows after a New Year's Day loss.

"For people who think we're having problems because of losing and they're trying to point the finger at us two, I think it's ridiculous," Howard said.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but Bryant's defensive ferocity the past two games has been accompanied by two of Howard's best games of the season.

"I think it's helped him to see, 'Look, I will do whatever it takes to win championships,' " Bryant said. "That's how I've been successful. The team needs me to defend? I'm going to defend. If my offense suffers from it, so be it. For him to see that helps him play burden-free. He doesn't feel like he has to put up a certain amount of numbers so people don't criticize him. It helps him to relax and just go out there and say, 'I'm just going to play hard.'

"The important thing is that your teammates have to know you're pulling for them and you really want them to be successful. And I'm trying to instill in them some of the DNA qualities that I have ‚?? being extremely stubborn, being extremely competitive, and getting the job done by any means necessary. No excuses. No poor me. No none of that. It just has to get done."